Tag Archives: humility

Righteousness

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Look what I did! I am so awesome! Have you heard or said these words? I once saw a plaque that read, “I know I’m not perfect but I’m so close that it scares me”. We often hear people expressing their confidence in very strong ways. What about the people who lack that type of self-confidence? Is there something wrong with them? Who wouldn’t be proud of what they’ve done? I would suggest that it may not be the lack of confidence or no pride in their accomplishments, but it may be that they are simply too humble to talk about themselves. Humility is a God given talent and should be practiced but today’s world it is seen as a sign of weakness. The opposite of humility is boasting and those type of people are even harder to deal with. We all know someone who is always right and identifies how others have “screwed up” without ever considering their own role in the situation. They make everyone around them miserable because they have done no wrong.

In Arizona, its school referendum time. “I’ve got mine, too bad about yours”. I often hear people complain about school taxes because they don’t have any kids in the system so why should they pay school property taxes. “I got my kids through school with the help of others, but I shouldn’t take my turn”. This selfish mentality is driving our world apart; we’ve forgotten about caring for each other. We need to watch over each other, we’re all we’ve got. I’ve got a picture frame on my desk that says, “It won’t matter what my bank balance was, the size house I lived in, or the type of car that I drove but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.” If you change the part – “life of a child” and make it “the life of another human being” we get a little closer to God’s will. Go make a difference.

8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my LORD, for whose sake I have lost all things. 9…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.  Philippians 3:8-9

Paul had everything in his life that he could want. He was considered a great man and was feared by many until he came face to face with Jesus Christ. Paul gave up everything (even his name) to follow Jesus. He was a righteous man under the law as a Pharisee; he told others what to do and people obeyed him. Jesus showed him the way to everlasting life, and he spent years in prison writing and telling of the good news. He’d lost everything and yet was grateful for his faith in Jesus Christ.

He realized that he was nothing without his faith in Jesus and the righteousness that comes from God. Paul was humble, steadfast in his faith, shared the good news whenever he could, encouraged others with his letters and remained focused on what God wanted him to do. The power, the social status, the envy, and the confidence that he had before, he considered a loss now that he has the knowledge of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Everything that we have is lost too if we don’t have the same faith in our savior Jesus Christ. Share the good news about having eternal life through faith in Him and all that God has done for you. You will make a difference in the life of another human being.

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Created to do Good Works

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“Service Before Self”, is one of the core values of the US Air Force. I would see this posted in just about every military installation that I worked on regardless of the branch. We haven’t been seeing much of this these days, but the world has changed the past two years. All of us serve someone at some point in our day and usually throughout our lives. As parents, we serve our kids, as spouses we serve our mate and as employees we serve customers – either internal or external to the company. Even leaders have people that they serve. A leader should be someone who is serving those that follow them; the concept known as servant leadership. By making their followers stronger, servant leaders build up their staff and work to make them successful. There are people in leadership positions who wrongfully believe that since they are in this place of “power” that people should be serving them. A true leader is more concerned about how they can support and help those that follow them.

Ken Blanchard has written extensively about servant leadership. Unfortunately, we see people every day who are simply serving themselves. The millennium generation grew up watching the greed of Wall Street and “leaders” serving their own interests. If anyone else benefited, well, that was just extra. So, who are you serving? I would suggest putting your focus on others and see what comes of it. I have benefited from a number of mentors in my life and I have also played that role for others. It is immensely satisfying and rewarding to help others when there is nothing to be gained.

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10

St. Paul wrote a lot about serving others in his letters, focusing much of his attention on humility. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul reminds them to be humble proclaiming, “I came to you in weakness and fear”. He was asking them to serve others with humility too. Using Jesus as our example, ask yourself, how did He show humility for us? The first thing that comes to my mind is the washing of His disciple’s feet at the last supper. The leader of the group, the leader of the heavens washed feet. Jesus was serving us!

The Son of God and God Himself was serving us so that we would see his example of a “good life”. God has prepared the good works for us. He has set the course, put people in our lives and us in the lives of others so that we could execute the plan He has for us. God has prepared these good works for us in advance; they aren’t chance but these opportunities are given to us to do God’s work. We are not put here to do our works or to be boastful. My apologies to the Air Force but “Service Before Self” really came from God. It was demonstrated to us by Jesus and now we must humble ourselves to serve others, just as God planned. 

Expectations

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“What do you want from me?” A phrase often uttered in anger between two people in a relationship. When I speak to Boards or Councils about their relationship with their CEO or when I coach supervisors, I always discuss setting expectations. If they do this often enough, they will prevent disappointment by both parties, and it will allow people to function without constant direction. Telling people what you expect of them is often the best way to meet your shared goals. My wife often says, “I can’t read your mind!” This is another form of missed expectations. I’ve written before about what we call the “order model” in emergency communications. Instead of just saying “copy” when given an order over the radio, the model requires that the message be repeated back to the sender to ensure complete understanding. It works well in high stress situations. The problem with low stress communications, the ones we have 99% of the time in our lives, is that it often misses the mark. 

How many times have you spend time in what feels like a circular conversation before you finally realize what you both of you are actually talking about? Usually both people assume they know but when they start asking questions, they realize that they aren’t at all on the same page. The order model would have helped but it sure would make for a long conversation. The bottom line is that we all need to work on explaining what we want or what we need no matter what role we are playing in our lives – spouse, child, co-worker, supervisor, employee, neighbor, etc. If you find yourself wanting to ask someone, “what do you want from me?” remember that you are half to blame for not knowing the answer. Be humble, be courteous and be direct in your exchange of needs. The results will be peaceful.

“And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

When I read the Old Testament, I am amazed by how simply things were being explained to God’s children. I guess It’s easy to think it simply because we know how the story ends. We know that God sent His Son to die for our sins and that we have been forgiven of our sins because of God’s grace. The readers of Micah did not. They ask, “What does the Lord require of you?” We all know the answer to that question – now. The readers at the time had no idea. I could close here by simply saying, “We know what the Lord requires, faith in Jesus as our Savior.” Too easy, right?

The wisdom that follows the question in Micah is what we should be concentrating on. “Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God”. Now there is some good advice! In today’s world we hear little about mercy, we hear little about humility and we rarely see people acting justly. At this moment in time, the U.S. is ideologically more divided than ever and things like humility and mercy are left for the “snowflakes”. I’m not taking shots at the left or the right in the U.S. political debate; I’m simply saying that the words of Micah should be very meaningful right now as way forward in our quest of unity and healing. 

Leadership through Humility

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Humility is defined as a modest or low view of one’s own importance and is a very rare trait to find in people these days. An entire generation of people have been raised in an era in which “everyone gets a trophy” and they never learned about being humble because everyone was equal. Being humble is something that we all can use a little more of and put into practice a little more often. We should strive to care more about others than we do ourselves. During this time of worldwide crisis, coming together to help one another is more important than ever.

Just once, I’d love to hear a politician praise the work of our healthcare providers or anyone else who is sacrificing their own health in service to others. We are seeing people volunteering to shop for the senior citizens in their neighborhoods, or people sharing supplies that are not readily available anymore or just simply staying connected to those that are in isolation. Whatever the case, people are rising up in a number of amazing ways. Stay healthy and strong during this time in our lives and maybe, just maybe, we will emerge a better mankind.

“Therefore, whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” Matthew 18:4

Being humble isn’t limited to those in leadership positions; it applies to all of us. When we start thinking that we are better than our neighbors or our co-workers, we have veered off track. Matthew is, of course, quoting Jesus here who is speaking to His disciples and then follows this verse with, 5“Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.” Jesus is telling us not to take ourselves too seriously and to be humble. Small children have not developed the “skill” of being boastful or full of themselves until later in development. Children are compassionate, listen to their parents, don’t think or speak poorly of others and often don’t knowingly sin. We can learn a lot from them.

Jesus is telling us that we are not the most important thing in this world – to stop being so full of ourselves that we think we are the center of attention. We should humble ourselves, set our focus on God and accept more people rather than judge them. When we receive the most humble, we receive Jesus. It isn’t a competition for things and accomplishments; it’s about being good children of God. Humility doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of what you’ve done but it does mean that it doesn’t define you. No one will care what you did here on earth if all you did was serve your own needs.

Value Others

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It seems as though I’ve been surrounded by people or circumstances that have revealed people genuine selfishness. Today’s world is filled with “I’ve got mine, too bad for you!” thinking. I have stayed away from political statements and hope to do that today but the American debate about healthcare and wealth is right at the heart of this. “I’ve got mine, too bad you didn’t work hard enough for yours” or “why should I pay for that?” I’m not suggesting socialism but I’m wondering if there isn’t a better way than “so sad, too bad”? Several months ago, I wrote about One Human Family and this is right back to that concept.

We are nearing Easter, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from dead and the forgiveness of all of our sins through the sacrifice of God’s Son. He lived a perfect life but understood that his sacrifice was necessary to save us all from eternal damnation. Jesus certainly had His but He shared it so everyone could live an eternal life with God, our Father. I know that there are many who will say that it isn’t the same but is it really different? The beginning of the second chapter of Philippians is titled “Imitating Christ’s Humility”. St. Paul saw this in the people of the Church in Phillipe and it still stands today. Perhaps instead of labeling each other and picking sides we should be looking for solutions to the problems that exist today. Isn’t this what God wanted for us anyway?

“3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Philippians 2:3-4

Through Paul, God is telling us to care for each other. It seems pretty clear to me. How can we run around with an “I’ve got mine” mentality when so many people need help? Obviously, there are limits but what are they? I don’t have answers to any of these, just more questions. If we build systems and processes that help people help themselves then haven’t, we done what God was commanding?

Later on his letter, St. Paul writes: “12Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose”(Philippians 2:12-13). I think God wants us to figure this out. I do know that name-calling, labeling and picking sides isn’t getting us any closer to a solution and neither is doing nothing. We will revisit this verse again next week as we get ready for Easter. I promise there will be no political commentary, but I do ask for us all to consider what these things all mean as celebrate our risen Savior, Jesus.

Pride and Selfishness

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Look what I did! I am so awesome! Have you heard or said these words? I once saw a plaque that read, “I know I’m not perfect but I’m so close that it scares me”. We often hear people expressing their confidence in very strong ways. What about the people who lack that type of self-confidence? Is there something wrong with them? Who wouldn’t be proud of what they’ve done? I would suggest that it may not be the lack of confidence or no pride in their accomplishments but it may be that they are simply too humble to talk about themselves. Humility is a God given talent and should be practiced but in today’s world it is seen as a sign of weakness. The opposite of humility is boasting and those type of people are even harder to deal with. We all know someone who is always right and identifies how others have “screwed up” without ever considering their own role in the situation. They make everyone around them miserable because they have done no wrong.

Related to this is the widening of the income gap. “I’ve got mine, too bad about yours”. I often hear people complain about school taxes because they don’t have any kids in the system so why should they pay school property taxes. “I got my kids through school with the help of others but I shouldn’t take my turn”. This selfish mentality is driving our world apart; we’ve forgotten about caring for each other. We need to keep watch over each other; we’re all we’ve got. I’ve got a picture frame on my dresser that says, “It won’t matter what my bank balance was, the size house I lived in, or the type of car that I drove but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.” If you can change “life of a child” and make it “the life of another human being” we get a little closer to God’s will. Go make a difference.

8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my LORD, for whose sake I have lost all things. 9…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.  Philippians 3:8-9

Paul had everything in his life that he could want. He was considered a great man and was feared by many until he came face to face with Jesus Christ. Paul gave up everything (even his name) to follow Jesus. He was a righteous man under the law as a Pharisee; he told others what to do and people obeyed him. Jesus showed him the way to everlasting life and he spent years in prison writing and telling of the good news. He’d lost everything and yet was grateful for his faith in Jesus Christ.

He realized that he was nothing without his faith in Jesus and the righteousness that comes from God. Paul was humble, steadfast in his faith, shared the good news whenever he could, encouraged others with his letters and remained focused on what God wanted him to do. The power, the social status, the envy and the confidence that he had before, he considered a loss now that he has the knowledge of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Everything that we have is lost too, if we don’t have the same faith in our savior Jesus Christ. Share the good news about having eternal life through faith in Him and all that God has done for you. You will make a difference in the life of another human being.

Serving Others

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“Service Before Self”, is one of the core values of the US Air Force. I see this posted in just about every military installation that I’m on, regardless of the branch. We all serve someone at some point in our day and usually throughout our lives. As parents, we serve our kids, as spouses we serve our mate and as employees we serve customers – either internal or external to the company. Even leaders have people that they serve. A leader should be someone who is serving those that follow them; the concept of servant leadership. By making their followers stronger, servant leaders build up their staff and work to make them successful. There are people in leadership positions who wrongfully believe that since they are in this place of “power” that people should be serving them. A true leader is more concerned about how they can support and help those that follow them.

Ken Blanchard has written extensively about servant leadership and his research on leadership. Unfortunately, we see people every day who are simply serving themselves. The millennium generation grew up watching the greed of Wall Street and “leaders” serving their own interests. If anyone else benefited, well, that was just extra. So, who are you serving? I would suggest putting your focus on others and see what comes of it. I have benefited from a number of mentors in my life and I have also played that role for others. It is immensely satisfying and rewarding to help others when there is nothing to be gained.

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10

St. Paul wrote a lot about serving others in his letters, focusing much of his attention on humility. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul reminds them to be humble proclaiming “I came to you in weakness and fear”, he was asking them to serve others with humility too. Using Jesus as our example, ask yourself, how did He show humility for us? The first thing that comes to my mind is the washing of His disciple’s feet at the last supper. The leader of the group, the leader of the heavens washed feet. Jesus was serving us!

The Son of God and God Himself was serving us so that we would have eternal life. God has prepared the good works for us. He has set the course, put people in our lives and us in the lives of others so that we could execute the plan He has for us. God has prepared these good works for us in advance; they aren’t chance but these opportunities are given to us to do God’s work. We are not put here to do our works or to be boastful. My apologies to the Air Force but “Service Before Self” really came from God. It was demonstrated to us by Jesus and now we must humble ourselves to serve others, just as God planned.

What Do You Want From Me?

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“What do you want from me?” A phrase often uttered in anger between two people in a relationship. Adam Lambert used this phrase as lyrics for a song by same title in 2010. When I taught leadership classes or coached a new supervisor, I often talked about setting expectations between the supervisor and the employees. Doing this often prevented disappointment and allowed people to function without constant direction. Telling people what you expect of them is often the best way to meet your shared goals. My wife often says “I can’t your mind!” This is another form of missed expectations. I’ve written before about what we call the “order model” in emergency communications. Instead of just saying “copy” when given an order over the radio, the model requires that the message be repeated back to the sender to ensure complete understanding. It works well in high stress situations.

The problem with low stress communications, the ones we have 99% of the time in our lives, is that it often misses the mark. We spent more than a half an hour with a designer this weekend before Lisa and I realized what she was actually talking about. We both assumed we knew and when we started asking questions, the designer got confused because we weren’t all on the same page. The order model would have helped but it sure would make for a long conversation. The bottom line is that we all need to work on explaining what we want or what we need, no matter what role we are playing in our lives – spouse, child, co-worker, supervisor, employee, neighbor, etc. If you find yourself wanting to ask someone, “what do you want from me?” remember that you are half to blame for not knowing the answer. Be humble, be courteous and be direct in your exchange of needs. The results will be peaceful.

“And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

When I read the Old Testament I am amazed by how simply things were being explained to God’s children. It’s easy to give advice to the characters of a story when you know how the story ends. We know that God sent His Son to die for our sins and that we have been forgiven of our sins because of God’s grace. The readers of Micah did not. They ask, “What does the Lord require of me?” We all know the answer to that question – now. The readers at the time had no idea. I could close here by saying, “We know what the Lord requires, faith in Jesus as our Savior.” Too easy, right?

The wisdom that follows the question in Micah is what we should be concentrating on. “Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God”. Now there is some good advice! In the U.S. we hear little about mercy these days, we hear little about humility and we rarely see people acting justly. The national polls continue to show that as a nation, we remain divided in ideologies and things like humility and mercy are left for the liberals. I’m not taking shots at the left or the right in the U.S. political debate; I’m simply saying that the words of Micah should be very meaningful right now as way forward in our quest of unity and healing. My personal expectation as a citizen is that we do all three – always. Since I can’t change the national conversation, I guess that I’ll start with my circle of influence. How about you?

Where did the customer service go?

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Whether we are in customer service, accounting, marketing or leadership positions, we are always serving a customer of some sort. Sometimes they are internal customers and sometimes they are the paying customers; either way, they can be demanding. Where has the good customer service gone? St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a great reminder of how we should act toward each other – customers or not. The old adage of the “customer is always right” seems to have gone away with the full-service gas station. People in the customer service business these days seem to be bothered with us “customers” and our needs.

On the flip side, have you started treating those serving you differently? If you are in a leadership position, do you think that your employees are there to serve you? How do you react when they need something or some help? Leaders must learn to deal with all types of people who have all types of needs. The management practice of situational leadership applies today more than at any other time. The principle is that every situation (or person) requires a different approach than you used the last time or perhaps will use the next time. It requires patience, humility and gentleness. We have four different generations in the workplace today and each needs its own approach. One thing that doesn’t change, patience and humility will go along way toward delivering great service.

“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” Ephesians 4:2

This verse is one of God’s directions for us. He teaches us, through St. Paul, how we should treat and live with each other. I haven’t found a person who enjoys the company of someone who isn’t humble and treats people poorly. We tend to tolerate these people in our lives because we have to, not because we want to. We are taught to love all of God’s creatures but some people make that very hard! Remain patient and tolerant, God is teaching you something. How do you act toward others? Are you the person that people merely tolerate? Are you gentle and humble with those who serve you? Take time to examine yourself and apply the direction that God is giving us.

Jesus demonstrated these attributes in His life. When the Disciples couldn’t understand the lessons Jesus was teaching, He never gave up. When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with trick questions, He loved them anyway and was gentle with them. Even on the cross, Jesus asked for mercy on those that were crucifying Him. I often say that if people are going to quote from the bible that they should be reading the whole thing and not just a few selected verses that make their point. In order for us to live as St. Paul suggests, we need to be reminded of God’s patience with us and we can do that by reading God’s word.

Taking Ourselves Too Seriously

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A few weeks ago I worked with the U.S. Army conducting training for our Homeland Response Forces and had the opportunity to discuss the temperament of General Officers with a couple of junior officers. We started talking about people who were genuine and approachable. One of these officers told a story about a retired 3 star General who lives in the same area that he does. This retired General drives his old pick up truck around town, wears blue jeans and spends his time working his farmland. This Captain also spoke about a General that he once worked for who would take off his rank insignia after his “official duties” and visit with the soldiers, play cards and eat with them when he was in Afghanistan and Iraq; rank was not important to him.

Humility is defined as a modest or low view of one’s own importance and is a very unusual trait to find in people these days. An entire generation of people has been raised in an era in which “everyone gets a trophy” and they never learned about being humbled by a loss because everyone was equal. Being humble is something that we all can use a little more of and put into practice a little more often. We should strive to care more about others than we do ourselves.

“Therefore, whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” Matthew 18:4

Being humble isn’t limited to those in leadership positions; it applies to all of us. When we start thinking that we are better than our neighbors or our co-workers, we have veered off track. Matthew is, of course, quoting Jesus here who is speaking to His disciples and follows this verse with “Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.” Jesus is telling us not to take ourselves too seriously and to be humble. Small children have do not developed the “skill” of being boastful or full of themselves until later in their development. Children are compassionate, listen to their parents, don’t think or speak poorly of others and usually don’t knowingly sin. We can learn a lot from them.

Jesus is telling us that we are not the most important thing in this world – to stop being so full of ourselves that we think we are the center of attention. We should humble ourselves, set our focus on God and accept more people rather than judging them. When we receive the most humble among, we receive Jesus. It isn’t a competition for things and accomplishments; it’s about being good children of God. Humility doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of what you’ve done but it does mean that what you’ve done doesn’t define you. No one will care what you do here on earth if all you do is serve your own needs. God wants us to serve each other and in order to do that, we must humble ourselves.